The present invention relates to portable, collapsible container carrier and insertable base for transporting food and beverage containers. The exposed panels of the base and the container carrier are intended to be used as advertising/promotional space. Thus, the present invention is also designed to be an advertising and promotional vehicle.
Description of the Prior Art
In the operation of fast-food carryout at restaurants, stadiums, arenas and other facilities, a number of selected items of food and drink are frequently carried by the patrons. If more than one or two items are to be carried, some type of carrier is typically provided for the patron's convenience. Such a carrier should be inexpensive, readily transportable, compactly stored, and quickly and easily loaded, all without compromising the ability to safely and conveniently carry a number of liquid filled containers. Liquid container carriers for many applications and of various configurations have been disclosed in U.S. Pat. Nos. to: Sargeant, 2,759,629; Farrington, 2,728,484; Weiselberg, 2,828,047; Katzenmeyer, 3,565,323; Lock, 4,053,099; Cowlishaw, 1,001,752; Schnorr, 1,563,443; Flamm, 2,330,699; Tyson, Jr., 2,513,762; Clement, et al., 2,567,054; Siddal, 2,732,983; and Struble, 3,744,704. These container carriers are, for the most part, complex, expensive to manufacture and difficult to store and load. Some require relatively rigid and expensive materials for support. Others require a number of time consuming steps for forming the carriers that are performed by the fast-food operator prior to loading. Where these prior art carriers are capable of flat storage, they generally require a considerable amount of setup time to form the folded parts into its operable configuration, and thus, cause delay in fast-food service. On the other hand, where the prior art carriers are preformed, setup time is considerably decreased but storage problems are increased since the completely unfolded and setup carriers require considerably more storage space.
U.S. patent application Ser. No. 08/745,033, filed Nov. 11, 1995, discloses a bottomless container carrier that is foldable for convenient and efficient transportation and storage. That invention incorporates a number of exposed and interior panels suitable for advertising and/or promotion, and sought to improve the strength and reliability of a container carrier to hold drink containers by providing, for each such drink container, a pair of aligned and spaced apart openings, wherein all aligned openings are elliptical, and wherein the major axis of these aligned elliptical openings are rotationally offset by 90.degree.. That invention also discloses an auxiliary tray and a mechanism to lock the tray in its operative position to maintain "lift" on the handle of the carrier when a consumer sets the carrier down and releases the handle. While the benefits of that invention are amply disclosed, that invention fails to disclose that while that system is more than adequate for smaller orders, it does not address the types of larger dinner-like orders or complete meals sold by restaurants, fast food chains, delicatessens or the like.
The present invention is a fully integrated, foldable base and container carrier system which allows for the novel transport and carrying of items and beverage containers.
Accordingly, it is an object o the present invention to disclose an alternative complete packaging system for carryout restaurant orders that can be placed in a integrated unit for transport to an alternate location.
It is also an object of the present invention to disclose a container carrier device which is designed to be placed over and sit upon a base in saddle-like fashion to form a complete, integrated carrying package, thereby incorporating the convenience of transporting one or more beverage containers with a complete dinner simultaneously.
It is a further object of the present invention to disclose a system that can carry multiple items, such as foods (hot or cold), condiments and flatware, with beverage containers, all of various sizes, without the worry of spillage.